Local laughs abound

This August, ComedyCity will celebrate its sixth annual Rogue Comedy Month — a month packed with experimental improv comedy shows that are sure to have audiences laughing.

“Rogue Comedy Month, in a nutshell, is when we take our normal format and give it a break for a month and try out a bunch of different show formats that we normally don’t do,” said ComedyCity Artistic Director Nick Wallander. “Some of them are brand new that we created for this year, some of them are fan favorites that are returning and some of them might be things that we’ve made slight adjustments to or tweaked and hopefully made better.”

Dedicating a month to trying out different formats than what might be seen at ComedyCity throughout the year allows the improv troupe to reach new audiences, test the waters with new ideas and highlight troupe members’ strengths in ways that ComedyCity’s regular programming may not be able to.

“We’ve transformed a month of the summer which traditionally has been slow for us to the point we’ve been gaining an audience every single year…” Wallander said. “We’ve been seeing an increase in numbers and we’ve learned that there’s an interest in being different and unique. It’s been exciting to discover what our community is interested in. We all get to pat ourselves on the back when something hits and an idea is really great, but it also allows us to utilize our strengths. Some of our people are really good in storytelling settings or narrative improv and others are really good at being presenters so they might take on the role of being a host in a show. We really get to see everyone’s best skills utilized and I think it really brings out the best in our people.”

Wallander said he hopes that by putting ComedyCity’s best foot forward during Rogue Comedy Month, attendees will give improv a chance and come to appreciate the talent of local comedians.

“For whatever reason, a lot of people don’t always connect with improv comedy,” he said. “They’ll hear the term and it gets a bad rap in pop culture sometimes. I want people to look at improv and see what we do with it and say to themselves, ‘Hey, that is pretty unique.’ It’s fun and there’s a lot of cool stuff that you can do with it, but I also want people to see that they have a very entertaining group of people in the community that are very funny. You don’t have to go to Los Angeles or New York to get really good, live, local comedy. We’ve got such amazingly talented people here and I want people to see that.”

That talent will be highlighted in returning fan-favorite shows as well as brand-new concepts that will debut throughout the month.
Those who attended last year’s Rogue Comedy Month shows may see some familiar programming on the line-up, including LOL and Order, Comedic Neutral and What a Bunch of A-Holes.

“One of my favorite returning shows is LOL and Order — that’s our courtroom drama spoof that we first tried last year and it was an absolute blast, especially for anyone who’s watched anything from any number of courtroom shows…” Wallander said. “A fan favorite that we actually do throughout the year but are also running in August is Comedic Neutral, which is our improvised Dungeons and Dragons adventure show — more or less a live game of Dungeons and Dragons performed by our improvisers where the audience will help us with rolling the dice and offering up suggestions as it goes along… Also returning is What a Bunch of A-Holes. That’s one that uses stories from Reddit that are popular and notorious in some way, shape or form. We read the stories off and then we reenact what we think that situation looked like.”

And rounding out this year’s Rogue Comedy Month are the new shows, which include a variety of game-show style performances.

“[Game shows] are really fun to do when you have improvisers who are into them,” Wallander said. “One of the newer ones is called Last One Laughing, and it’s based around a Canadian game show of the same name where they lock a bunch of comedians in a giant room and get them to make each other laugh until everyone’s eliminated for laughing… It should be very difficult because laughter is contagious, and when you have a live audience it’s a whole different atmosphere. We also have Prompt and Circumstance, which is our take on Dropout TV’s Make Some Noise in which our players will get random prompts as well as a few little twists and turns that are going to be thrown their way… And there is the Monumental Experimental Impractical Game Show of Everything hosted by our very own Joey Presley, who basically designed a show that is going to expose what three of our players are experts at. He’s got several different categories and he’s going to figure out who’s the best in each category. Some of it will be physical challenges, some of it’s going to be trivia, and he insists that there are some surprises for that one as well.”

Learn more about Rogue Comedy Month and find a complete lineup of shows at comedycity.net or on ComedyCity’s Facebook page.